I was upstairs hosting panels during the peak afternoon hours so, they tell me, I missed the heavy traffic. It was pretty bad, some said, and I heard a few friends wonder out loud: What is the breaking point for this convention? Every building has its limits and if the San Diego Convention Center, large as it is, hits its maximum capacity, what do they do? I suggested they equip some of the video gaming booths with live ammunition. That might thin the herd out a bit.

We had packed houses for all four panels I did up in Room 6AB, which seats a couple thousand people. First up was Quick Draw! with Scott Shaw!, Jeff Smith and Sergio Aragonés. The idea of this game, if you've never seen it, is that we get three swift cartoonists up there, drawing on projection devices so that everyone can see what they're drawing. Then I throw challenges at them, sometimes taking suggestions from the audience. Not much more I can say about this here except that the audience sure seemed to enjoy most of it.

Then we had the annual Cartoon Voice Panel, this year with Neil Ross, Gregg Berger, Tom Kenny, Billy West and Joe Alaskey…five of the best in the biz. I stuck them with reading (without prep time) a script from the old Adventures of Superman radio show…and they all sure rose to the challenge. Someone made the comment after that if all radio dramas sounded as silly as this one, they'd still be around. Someone else remarked that the best thing about the panel was the obvious respect the five actors had for one another. Again, not much more I can report other than that Billy West — with all concurring — decried the notion that some producers have about installing "names" in animated projects, hiring folks who are known for their on-camera work. It does sometimes work — the leads in Shrek, for instance — but what happens a staggering percentage of the time is that top-notch voice actors are bypassed for folks who, in that capacity, are highly inept. A star name may help with a marketing campaign…but 8.5 out of ten times, the producer has to then accept for an inferior performance by someone who, though perhaps very gifted in some capacity, is simply operating outside their area of expertise. Anyone who saw our little panel today can testify what a seasoned, experienced voice actor can bring to a role.

Next up was my annual interview with Ray Bradbury. We discussed Michael Moore, the space program, Ray's passion for writing, the late Julius Schwartz, Ray's life before he sold his first story, his screenplay for Moby Dick, the time he found a "dinosaur skeleton" (actually part of an old roller coaster) on the beach, and many more topics. I even got him to tell the "Mr. Electrico" story that he told last week on the Dennis Miller Show by pointing out that we had a larger audience. The crowd was mesmerized, to say nothing of the interviewer.

Lastly, we filled darn near every seat in the house for our "spotlight" on the first lady of cartoon voice acting, June Foray. Aided by three fine voice talents (Chuck McCann, Gregg Berger and Joe Alaskey), we re-created a couple of golden moments from the Rocky & Bullwinkle program and quizzed June on an incredible career. At one point, I ran her through a list compiled by animation historian (and current voice of Bullwinkle J. Moose) Keith Scott. It was a partial accounting of radio shows on which she was heard and it included…let me just change margins here…

The Cavalcade of America, A Date With Judy, Sherlock Holmes (with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce), Mayor of the Town (with Lionel Barrymore), The Whistler, The Billie Burke Show, The Rudy Vallee Show, Stars Over Hollywood, The Al Pearce Show, This is My Best (with Orson Welles), Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, Baby Snooks (with Fanny Brice), Dr. Christian (with Jean Hersholt), I Deal in Crime (with Bill Gargan), Jack Haley's Sealtest Village Store, Glamour Manor (with Kenny Baker), Phone Again Finnegan (with Stu Erwin), The Charlie McCarthy Show (with Edgar Bergen), The Dick Haymes Show, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Bob Hope Show, The Penny Singleton Show, Presenting Charles Boyer, Tex Williams's All-Star Western Theater, Red Ryder, The Screen Directors' Playhouse, The Screen Guild Theatre, The Lux Radio Theater, The Great Gildersleeve, My Favorite Husband (with Lucille Ball), Richard Diamond: Private Detective (with Dick Powell), and Martin Kane, Private Eye.

And we had a nice montage of June's career, assembled by my friend and co-host Earl Kress. It included her work with Stan Freberg on "St. George and the Dragonet," plus clips from a Donald Duck cartoon ("Trick or Treat," with June playing a witch named Witch Hazel), a Bugs Bunny cartoon ("Broomstick Bunny," with June playing a witch named Witch Hazel), plus episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Garfield and Friends, Baby Looney Tunes, The Smurfs and a few others. We even tossed in a clip from an episode of the original Twilight Zone ("The Living Doll") in which June voiced a doll named Talky Tina who does the world a service by murdering Telly Savalas.

There were a lot of memorable moments today but if I could only save one, I'd save the sound of that huge audience, standing and cheering June Foray at the close of that event. It was almost an explosion of pure love and respect, and I can't think of anyone more deserving.

Good night, everyone.

Day Two of the Comic-Con International was a lot like Day One: Crowds, booth babes, costumed folks, people marvelling at the turnout and/or hotel prices, bad fast food…and I may be wrong but I think I actually saw someone selling comic books. One thing I find fascinating about this event is that it's many conventions in one, and you kind of have to find the convention you wish to attend. Depending on where you go in the massive hall, it's a gaming convention, it's a convention about upcoming movie releases, it's a convention about comic books that are about to come out, it's a convention about comic book history. Or collecting animation art or comic art…or about publishing your own comics. Whatever you want, it's probably here somewhere. You just have to look 'til you find it.

To an awful lot of folks, it seems to be a convention about trying to get work in comics. On my way out of the restaurant at dinner, I ran into the head guy at one of the companies — I won't say who — and he mentioned how weary he was of being "followed around" (I think that's the term he used) by guys with portfolios who won't believe they aren't good enough…or that even if they are, he has no project on which he can give them work. He expects a certain amount of that, says he, but this year it has been worse than ever.

To those who are turned away, I know, it seems like the editors and execs are insensitive, and that the only problem for them is merely saying "no" so many times a day…but there's another side to it. It's not easy in an emotional sense for most people to have to constantly dash someone's dreams, tell them they won't be getting the job that will fulfill their dreams and get them off the unemployment line. Yes, there have been one or two editors in comics who seemed to enjoy it — again, I won't say who — but for most, it ain't easy.

And yes, I know it comes with the job. But it's something I rarely see mentioned and I thought it was worth bringing up…especially since it was so thoroughly on this fellow's mind.

On to my Panel Report: Did four of them today, starting with the Spotlight on Jack Adler. Good attendance, lots of information dredged up and disseminated. Adler is the guy who invented many of the techniques used for coloring and color-separating comic books for decades. Like many old-timers I've interviewed, he was worried he wouldn't remember anything and, of course, he remembered almost everything, though occasionally with a wee bit of prompting. I hope some magazine like Alter Ego (or better still, Alter Ego itself) will not only print a transcript of the panel but will dispatch an interviewer to talk with Jack longer than I could today.

Second panel of the day: Spotlight on Chuck McCann. Folks, you had to be there. Very funny man with very funny stories. We showed clips, including a hilarious TV sketch with Chuck as Clark Kent having a helluva time changing out of his civvies and into Superman. A lot of people also loved a series of commercials we ran and were surprised to learn that Chuck was the original voice of the "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" cuckoo and his grandpa. Many recalled the memorable series of ads for Right Guard deodorant where Chuck was in the medicine chest, greeting the fellow next door with a cheery, "Hi, guy!" But they were amazed by one we showed that had Chuck bantering with Groucho Marx as the guy next door. (It never aired, Chuck said, because the ad agency decided Groucho, who was in his seventies at the time, presented the wrong image for a product that wanted to appeal to young men. Idiots.) There were other great moments but, like I said, you had to be there.

Then came the annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel with Dave Gibbons, Walt Simonson, Mike Royer, Paul Ryan, Steve Rude and a few members of the Kirby family. The clan presented what they're calling the "Jack Kirby Award" for — and as a recipient, I can quote from the lovely plaque I was presented — "…dedication to the Kirby legacy." My ex-partner Steve Sherman got one, as did his brother Gary, inkers Mike Thibodeaux and Mike Royer, publishers Mike Richardson and John Morrow, author Ray Wyman, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, publisher-musician Glenn Danzig, art collector Dave Schwartz…and I'm doing this from memory so I'm probably omitting someone. (Oh, yeah — Marty Lassick.) Then the artists from the panel discussed how Jack had influenced their work and you'll read all this when John Morrow publishes the transcript in The Jack Kirby Collector.

Last panel of the day: A Tribute to Bob Clampett, the great cartoon director and producer. We were joined by his daughter Ruth, animators Milt Gray and Leo Sullivan, and animation historian Jerry Beck. It's late so I think I'll write more about this one in a day or three, rather than rush the topic.

Before I left the convention hall for the day, I wandered down to Artist's Alley. Remember what I said a moment ago about how you have to find your own convention? Well, that's where I found a lot of mine. It's like they took the old San Diego Convention and hid it waaaaay down at one end of the building. I chatted with Gene Colan, Frank Springer, Mike Kaluta, Tom Yeates, Al Gordon, Ken Steacy, Jack Katz, Ramona Fradon and others who were selling sketches and artwork and art folios. If you read this before you come to the con, make sure you make the hike down to that time zone…because despite all the things there are in that place to see and do, I didn't enjoy anything more than mingling with some great artists.

I'm going beddy-bye now. Four more panels tomorrow. Hope to see some of you at some of them.

On Monday, the Rasmussen daily tracking poll in the presidential race had Bush up by two points over Kerry. We told you then that before the week is out, that poll would give Kerry a 2-3 point lead over Bush. And sure enough, they now have Kerry three points ahead of Bush. I'm guessing it'll be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week before they have Bush in the lead again.

And hello from the Comic-Con International, where rumors abound that attendance figures are exceeding all expectations. One can also hear many a horror story of local hotel room pricing. At my hotel last night, as I was checking in, a gent who arrived sans reservation, was trying to convince the next desk clerk over that he was so important and such a good customer of the chain that they simply had to find a room for him. The clerk was trying in his best, polite Front Desk manner to tell the guy that his chances of securing lodging there this weekend were about the same as Linda Ronstadt's of playing the Aladdin. I'm not too happy with the room I did get but when I think of friends who are paying thrice these fees at Super 8 Motels, I can't complain too much.

So what's to report besides the very size of this convention? The last few years, that's generally been the Big Story, dwarfing all others. I did a signing this morning, had two swift business-type conferences, then it was up to Room 8 to host three panels in a row, all well-attended.

The first was a delightful chat with my friend of ~37 years, veteran comic book artist Mike Royer. And boy, does it feel odd, though not incorrect, to refer to Mike as a veteran. When we met, he had only been assisting Russ Manning on Tarzan for a year or two, and he'd recently started drawing stories for Creepy and Eerie. Soon after, he became Jack Kirby's inker and later went on to a tidy career with Disney where, among other duties, he was the main designer of Winnie the Pooh stuff for the Disney Stores. It was a good conversation — even I learned things — and when I find out who's going to print it, I'll direct you to the transcript.

Then we had the Golden/Silver Age Panel with, from left to right, Tom Gill, Sid Jacobson, Gene Colan, Jack Adler, Frank Springer, Frank Bolle and Harry Harrison. There were many highlights but few in attendance will forget Harrison telling of the time he and his then-partner, Wally Wood, decided to play a little joke on their editor. It was a common prank for artists to finish a page normally and then to do a little pasteover to change a drawing or two into something outrageously filthy. Once the editor and the staff had been properly shocked and/or amused, the pasteover could be peeled off and the art would be suitable for publication. That's what Harrison and Wood figured would happen once when, drawing a western scene of a horse rearing up, they added in an enormous, diseased phallus. Everyone at the office laughed but somehow, no one remembered to peel off the offending member before sending the book off to the printer. It was on the presses, seconds from seeing print, when someone caught it.

[NOTE TO SELF: If I ever host another of these Golden/Silver Age panels, we have got to keep the dais down to six, preferably fewer. These guys have too many good stories to need seven of them up there.]

Then my third panel of the day was the Sergio and Mark Panel…where, among other revelations, we announced two upcoming mini-series projects we've agreed to do for Dark Horse. Not sure of the exact titles yet but one will basically be Groo Meets Conan and the other will be Groo Meets Tarzan. No, I am not kidding.

Didn't get to talk to as many people as I'd have liked, today. If you were one of the folks to whom I said a fast, insufficient hello while racing past you to a panel or meeting, my apologies. And with four panels scheduled for tomorrow (Friday), it'll probably be more of the same.

I am told from a source within The Tonight Show that they've been trying for weeks to book Michael Moore and have finally snagged him for next Thursday night. This could be an interesting interview as Mr. Leno seems to have more reservations about Moore and his tactics than some other hosts the filmmaker has faced.

Since I'm away from home and laptopping it, I'm unable to read all the articles about the 9/11 report that was released today. But Fred Kaplan seems to have a pretty solid overview.

I agree with Avedon Carol that we ought to have real ballots. We should also have standardized voting procedures so that folks in the poor neighborhoods don't vote on machines that are more likely to misread their ballots than those counted in wealthy terrains.

I disagree slightly that receipts wouldn't be necessary if we had real paper ballots. What I would like to see is a system where you vote via touch screen and the device spits out a little card that lists all your votes in plain English…and also has them encoded in a little barcode at the bottom. Instead of signing in to vote when you arrive, you would instead sign in as you leave, verifying that the receipt card accurately represents your votes.

On the way out, you could — totally at your choice — let poll watchers or reporters scan the barcode part of your receipt. This would be roughly the equivalent of participating in an exit poll, as many of us do now, but it would be easier and have more value. If the tally in a given precinct was wildly off the exit polls, it would probably pinpoint error or fraud in counting. Someone could also check to see that the barcoding matched the votes, minimizing another possible area of screw-ups.

Vote fraud and error are both possible with any system. The argument against the old-fashioned paper ballots — and this was not without some merit — was that they were counted in precincts without central oversight. My mother had the voting at our house a few times in the "paper" day and also early in the punchcard era. If we got all our buddies together to run a polling place, there'd be really nothing stopping us from marking a lot of Republican ballots "spoiled" and replacing them with ballots marked for Democrats…or vice-versa. Touch screens were supposed to eliminate that possibility…and I guess they have, though they've created more dark holes than they've filled. I really think the best system of all would involve me being able to take home a certified copy of my vote. Then some proof is in my hands, not theirs.

…so I might as well report something about hotels for the Comic-Con. A friend of mine writes me that he has had to cancel his trip due to lack of an affordable place to stay. Says he, he had a reservation at a motel in Chula Vista, which is about fifteen minutes from the Convention Center. Then a story appeared in a San Diego newspaper that said hotels were getting $500 a night for rooms during the con, and his motel cancelled his reservation and told him he could have it back but the price would now be $700 a night. (I gather they can do this because he hadn't paid in advance for the first night.) This is for a motel room that — I just looked — advertises normal rates of $52-$62 on the Internet.

Out of curiosity, since I already have my hotel room, I just used Travelaxe, which is a wonderful and free piece o' software that can usually find you the cheapest lodgings on the web, and looked for a room for Thursday night through Sunday morn in or around San Diego. Couldn't find anything under around a thousand bucks for three nights…and these were at places that are 10+ miles away from the Convention Center and ordinarily go for less than a hundred a night.

Back in the seventies, I had a friend who lived in Los Angeles and commuted each day to the San Diego Con. That is, instead of getting a room down there, he drove home each night and slept in his own bed. Hotel rooms were something like $20 a night then and there was no shortage…but he calculated the gas prices and decided that by going back and forth, he'd save enough cash to buy a copy of some old issue of Action Comics after which he lusted. We razzed him and pointed out that he was foregoing 5-7 hours of convention each day and spending it instead on the 5 Freeway, which is always a joy. We thought he was insane then…but like a lot of people we label insane, he may just have been ahead of his time.

I don't have many details — only that he "died two weeks ago" — but I wanted to note the passing of Rudy Palais, one of comic art's most distinctive sylists. In his day, which was roughly from the beginning of comics into the sixties, he (and his brother Walter) worked for most of the New York publishers, and I believe Rudy started with a job in the Harry "A" Chesler shop in 1939. He worked briefly for DC on Doctor Mid-Nite, for Holyoke on Catman, for Quality Comics on Blackhawk, Doll Man and Phantom Lady, and for Charles Biro on the original Daredevil. His most notable assignments were a 20-year tour-of-duty drawing intermittent tales for Classics Illustrated and a number of horror comics he drew in the fifties, especially for Harvey. (He also drew for the early EC crime and horror titles.)

His work was quite organic, and some scholars of the form have compared his horror work favorably to that of "Ghastly" Graham Ingels, noting that like Ingels, Palais had a way of making creepy things ooze right off the page. In the sixties, Palais turned up in the pages of Charlton comics. I believe his last art was for The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves — very odd, impressionistic short stories — and then he did some lettering work for them before retiring from comics around 1969. I never met the man but I followed his work and you could tell that he really cared about doing good comic art.

Posting will be light here the next few days as I haul my panel-moderating butt down to you-know-where. I'll try to put up reports on what's transpiring but can't be certain I won't be too busy/tired.

Pre-convention fatigue set in last night around 11 PM, which is later than usual. There comes a time when in the hustling and bustling to get things done, one pauses to wonder if the trade-off is worth it; if life would not be better to forego the joys of the con if it also means avoiding matters of packing and driving and compressing one's whole life for transport. You know that on the other end, it'll probably seem like a great deal but for the moment, it sure doesn't feel that way.

I also know that at some point, I will have to cope with post-convention fatigue. We'll discuss that when it arrives. I'm guessing Sunday afternoon at around 5:30.

Not much else to say before I pack the computer. If you're at the con and you see me and you want to tell me how much you love logging into this website, I won't put up a struggle. After each con the last few years, I've gotten a few notes from people who said, "I wanted to talk to you but you always seemed so busy." That may not be so. When I worked for Hanna-Barbera, I think I developed the habit of looking busy when I was doing absolutely nothing…just in case Bill Hanna walked past my office. (Mr. Hanna didn't like it when his employees seemed to be moving less than his cartoons.)

If you're not at the con, we'll miss you. Do try to make it next year. You'll have a very good time…all except for the moments, before and after, of convention fatigue. And even they aren't so bad once you see what you get in exchange.

Continuing with our theme of news sources that tell us what they think we want to hear: I think Internet news polls are just about worthless. In fact, they're less than worthless. Not only do they attract the most passionate and unrepresentative voters (many of whom can figure out how to vote multiple times) but they wrongly convince people of trends that may not exist. They're just a cheap scam to get you onto the website and to keep you there a little longer, clicking away.

All that said, I had to laugh out loud at the one I just noticed on the CNN site (on Lou Dobbs' page). Kind of a lopsided vote there…and of course, it's all these people voting in a completely unverifiable, easy-to-rig manner to say that they want voting to be more verifiable. You kind of wonder what's on the mind of those who voted against paper receipts. The only semi-logical argument I've ever heard against them is that, supposedly, receipts might make it easy for people to sell their vote, in that they could then prove to the person paying them that they'd voted as ordered. The problem with that argument is that absentee ballots make vote-selling even easier and no one is against them.

Nothing annoyed me more about the 2000 election than all the Bush partisans trying to pretend that the irregularities in that election were a minor detail and telling Democrats to "get over it." It was like some of them were afraid that any expressed concern about more accurate voting would further taint their boy's "victory." I have never been convinced that a different guy would have wound up in the White House if every voter who was qualified to vote and wanted to vote had done so and been tallied as per their intent. But I was sure disappointed that I never heard a prominent Republican say that they were uncomfortable with the way their guy got in.

I have a lot of running-around to do today so here's a link to the website for the Comic-Con International, where attendees will find all sorts of useful info, like maps of the shuttle bus routes and schedules for celebrity-type autographs. You'll also find the latest programming info, including last minute changes.

And here, one more time, is a link to the list of events I'm moderating at the con. Anyone who attends all thirteen is eligible for the big cash prize jackpot which in years past has always been won by me. Experts agree I have the inside track again this time…but you never know.

So about twenty minutes ago, I'm sitting here writing out notes for my Comic-Con programs when I hear (a) tires squealing, (b) the sound of something hitting something else and (c) a strange roaring sound. In that order. Out I run and I see that one block south of me, a car has smashed into the hedges around a neighbor's house. The roaring sound is water gushing because in the process, the car knocked over a fire hydrant. In fact, the rear end of the car is over the broken hydrant so rushing water is bubbling up under the car and out into the street.

I run back in, call 911 and report the above. "Was anyone injured?" a man asks me. I tell him I didn't get close enough to tell. He says they'll send someone and I run back out and hike down to the scene of the collision.

One other person is there — the driver of the car, apparently unhurt. He is smoking a cigarette and kind of half-chuckling about how his relatively-new auto is probably now a total write-off. He comes over and tells me that another driver, who was driving like crazy, ran him off the road and kept on going. I tell him what I heard and also that I reported the accident. He says, "Good, but I'm seriously drunk" — and it's somewhat obvious that he is. I am not certain I believe his story about another driver but I figure someone else gets paid to think about such things.

Three fire engines pull up. The first man off the first one asks me if I was driving the car. I say, "No, I'm the one who phoned it in. He was driving," and I point out the seriously drunk guy, who is standing there, lighting another cigarette. Firemen scramble into action, blocking off the road and then working to turn off the water. About three of them begin interrogating the driver as an ambulance arrives and I figure my work there is done. As I start for home, I run into a neighbor who says he was awakened by the crash so he threw on some clothes and came out to see what happened. I tell him as much as I know. He points out that the occupants of the house where the accident occurred are either away or very sound sleepers. There's no one outside except the driver, the firemen, the ambulance crew and two spectators (us). The neighbor and I both decide to head to our respective homes and I come in here and write this.

I just looked outside. The fire trucks are gone but two police cars are there, probably talking to the driver. The water is off. The car is still sticking out of the hedge. And I'm going to bed. Good night.

If you're going to San Diego, beware of people selling cheese in the streets. There's enough cheese inside the convention, anyway. (I cribbed this item from Heidi MacDonald's The Beat. If you read it regularly, you won't need me.)

I was also interested in this opinion piece by Thomas Frank. Frank has been making the rounds, advancing a theory that I believe is not without merit. It's that the Republican Party courts votes and wins elections by pounding the idea that they represent "traditional American values" — pro-gun, anti-abortion rights, anti-gay, protect the flag, Mom, apple pie, etc. — but that these are not the true values of the Republican leadership. The argument is that they gain power via those issues but then use that power primarily to push a pro-business agenda.

I think Frank may be overstating his case. Certainly, there are Republican leaders who push those "red meat" issues for real, and you can't expect either party not to put on a little show for its base in an election year. But I don't think it would hurt the Democrats to remind people that being able to get a decent job and health coverage are also "traditional American values."